Forget the financial markets. Evidence is mounting that the real economy is suffering from Brexit

BEFORE the referendum, economists were in near-unanimous agreement that a vote to Leave would hit the economy. And as predicted, the past three weeks have been torrid. The pound has fallen by one-tenth against the dollar; the FTSE 250, an index of domestically focused firms, is down. Alongside the now-familiar turmoil in financial markets, there is growing evidence that the real economy is slowing.
It is not easy to assess the economic impact of Brexit, because official data are published with a long lag. The first official estimate of GDP growth in the third quarter will not come out until late October.

But there is a smorgasbord of other indicators of economic activity—in particular, data “scraped” from the internet—which occur at a higher frequency than official …